Storage devices have various characteristics and store data in different ways. Solid-state storage devices typically store data in storage cells. Some solid-state storage cells have a finite usable lifetime and may become unreliable after a finite number of programs or writes.
Data written to storage devices often tends to have certain patterns. Headers or other metadata may typically have similar values and a similar position in the data, padding data may consistently be added to the end of a file, or other repeated data patterns may be written to media of a storage device. Writing the same data to storage cells of a solid-state storage device repeatedly can shorten the usable lifetime of the solid-state storage device prematurely, by programming or writing to certain storage cells disproportionally due to repeated patterns of data.